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Now it's the culture.....or Hollywood movies, you know, the vividly gruesome and gory ones....or maybe....I know....it's video games. Yeah, that's it. Those goddamn shoot 'em up video games that the lazy, shiftless, underemployed youth play 24/7. That's got to be it.

Young males obtain military-grade weapons and slaughter theater goers, political event attendees or first graders.....and it's our "culture of violence" as witnessed in movies and video games that is blamed.

Colorado Governor Hickenlooper....“The depiction of assault weapons again and again. There might well be some direct connection between people who have mental instability and when they go over the edge, they transpose themselves, they become part of one of those videos games. And perhaps that’s why all these assault weapons are used.”

Holy Joe Lieberman....Lieberman said that producers of violent movies and video games must be asked to “tone it down,” because violence in entertainment is “a causative factor” leading to incidences of violence.

“The violence in the entertainment culture – particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera – does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent,” Lieberman insisted. “Doesn’t make everybody more violent, but it’s a causative factor in some cases.”

“We ought to ask the entertainment community, what are you going to do to tone that down,” Lieberman said of policymakers in Washington.

Apparently, because the 2nd amendment can be interpreted to justify the ownership of military assault weapons...for self defense purposes, naturally.....the 1st amendment is at fault when those military assault weapons slaughter children.....or something.

There is no scientific study demonstrating a correlation between watching gory movies or playing violent video games and violent behavior. But in the Village of the Damned, the absence of any empirical evidence has never kept the usual sanctimonious scum-suckers from spouting stupid, 'I feel it in my gut', nonsense. Think: Iraq and WMD.

Obviously, this is all horseshite. Hollywood movies and violent-themed video games are viewed and played by young males in every country of the world. Yet, other countries do not experience the massacres that the U.S. does. The difference? The guns.

At least 24 Americans every day (8-9,000 a year) are killed by people with guns – and that doesn't count the ones accidentally killed by guns or who commit suicide with a gun. Count them and you can triple that number to over 25,000.

That means the United States is responsible for over 80 percent of all the gun deaths in the 23 richest countries combined.

Gun violence is an American problem. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and 50% of the world's guns. While the number of Americans who own guns is actually decreasing.....yes, decreasing.....the number of guns that American gun owners have is increasing.Think about that.

30 years ago, 50% of households owned guns....in 2010 it was only 32%. 20% of gun owners own 65% of all guns in the U.S.

Conclusion: More, and more dangerous, guns are being stockpiled by fewer and fewer American gun owners.

Now to the question of fear. Perceived or otherwise. My blog commenting bud, Reality, wrote yesterday that fear is the reason why Americans now own over 300 million guns instead of the 200 million we owned in the 90's. I think Reality is correct about that.

If fear is the reason why Americans have so many more guns today.....what explains the fact that even though our nation has more guns overall.....fewer Americans are gun owners? In other words, why are so many guns being stockpiled by, apparently, fewer scared citizens? And why isn't every American equally afraid?

Immediately following Barack Obama's election in 2008......a report from Oregon..."We called one warehouse that went through 4,000 assault rifles in four days. One warehouse we called had 21 assault rifles when they opened for business on Monday, and within 30 seconds they were gone," King said.

November 11, 2008.....a report from Virginia...."I have been in business for 12 years, and I was here for Y2K, September 11, Katrina," Conatser said, as a steady stream of customers browsed what remained of his stock. "And all of those were big events, and we did notice a spike in business, but nothing on the order of what we are seeing right now."

While the number of guns sold nationally after the election were not yet available, experts said it appears that the increase in gun sales is a repeat of what happened in 2008 after President Barack Obama was elected the first time.

Is it fear of Obama that is driving the surge of new gun purchases? If so, why would that be?